Shadowed Pictures
by Rising From The Flames
Summary: "That was the last time I ever saw her. I kept my eyes open for a particularly bright spark, but I found nothing. So I resumed my place in the corners of the world, the ever present, yet always elusive shadow that sees all and can do nothing."


**Hello everyone. I know I haven't posted anything for a while, but I'm on vacation now, so I'm going to finish/update everything I've been meaning and promising to. :S**

**This is my entry for the audition round of the Fanfiction Idol Competition. It is also my response to the perspectives challenge by shiftingfull. It's from a ... different perspective.**

**Once again, I don't own it.**

**Enjoy! :)**

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><p>Do not stand at my grave and weep<p>

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning's hush

I am the swift uplifting rush.

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry;

I am not there. I did not die.

~Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep – Mary Elizabeth Frye

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><p>Gentle whispers follow me as I move between the lives, from corner to corner, room to room. The lights are fading as I grow bigger and bigger and bigger with each passing hour, enveloping the word in my black cloak. And I watch. I watch the rustle of the leaves on a warm summer's night. I watch the dancing of the waves at high tide. But most importantly, I watch the lives. I watch as people stumble through the years, rarely realizing the extent of what they are missing. But there are a few sparks amidst this dull tableau. A few minds that are open to the possibilities of life and that catch life at it's greatest and hold on to it forever. Those are the ones I like to watch. They are the most unpredictable, indescribable, unfathomable, complicated and beautiful actors on the stage of time. Two such lights shone the most beautiful of all, but their story is also one of the most tragic.<p>

...

I still remember the first he caught my attention. I was hiding in a corner, concealed by billowing smoke and hundreds of voices saying goodbye. I remember seeing him standing by a couple, both with blond hair. A boy about a year or two younger hung on his arm, and in the other hand he held a camera. What caught my attention was his excitement. Unlike most of the other children on the platform, I felt no anxiety, only an uncontainable energy fueled by the excitement of his introduction to the wizarding world. As his mother pulled him in for a tearful hug, his eyes flitted longingly towards the camera clasped securely by his side. Once goodbyes were over he ran towards the train and jumped on. As the train rolled out of the station he faded from sight, consumed by the heavy smoke.

That year I caught glances of him here and there. I caught snatches of conversation on my way past, but nothing that held my attention. The boy slowly faded to the back of mind along with his excitement and the click of his ever-present camera. Before too long he was lost amidst the rush of life.

...

I do not remember what first brought her to my attention. Maybe it was her laugh that sounded like chiming bells, or the way she had of standing out and fading into the shadows simultaneously, as if she could not decided whether she wanted to be noticed or ignored. What I do remember was the bright glow of determination that lit up everything around her whenever she wanted something. The first time I noticed this glow was when she was walking up to the sorting hat. One single word was running through her head over and over again._ Gryffindor_. When the hat shouted that one word for all to hear a smile lit up her face. She jumped up and skipped towards the table loudly applauding her. Her glow lit up everyone around her, but only one person shone as bright as her. The boy she was sitting next to. He had his camera at the ready and I could tell by the way he was looking at her that, more than anything else, he wanted to take her picture, but he restrained himself.

She barely even noticed him as friends she had made on the train came to join her, but he didn't mind, he just kept watching her, and that seemed to be enough for him. As she talked and came to feel at home her glow dimmed down until she was just a little light amidst all the others, and I crept back into the corner to await the time when the candles would be blown out and I could roam free.

That night I visited the boy while he was asleep, and above his bed, amidst the pictures of the black haired boy with the lightning scar, the boy's hero, was a single picture of a pretty girl with dark eyes and long, black, curly hair. Somehow he had managed to take her picture that night. As they slept I roamed, flying through the night on my black wings. The wind blew against me and slowly, all thoughts of the two children were blown from my mind once again.

...

It was four years before I thought of them again. I was roaming through Hogwarts castle one night when light exploded into existence. I followed it to it's source and found her sitting on her bed with her friends. They were all giggling and talking about different ways of getting Harry Potter to invite them to a Christmas party. It was all in jest, yet on one face there was a spark of determination that far surpassed any joke. There was a lull in the conversation, then she looked a girl with brown hair straight in the eye and suggested using a love potion. They were silent for a moment, then her friends hesitantly started to laugh, trying to gauge whether or not she was joking. She looked down at the bed sheets, then started to laugh with the rest, but it did not sound sincere. I slunk back into a corner and waited until the light started to grow.

The next day she ran downstairs, then stopped, looking around. The common room was crowded with students, most only half awake. Her eye fell on the boy with black hair and a lightning bolt scar, the same boy I had seen in the pictures on his wall four years ago, except that now he looked more like a man than a boy. A smile lit up her face and stalked towards him. He didn't notice her at first as he was scanning the crowd, but the red haired young man standing next to him elbowed him in the ribs and he saw her. A look of wariness crossed his face, but he tried to hide it with a smile. She didn't notice. Before he could say anything she blurted out:

"Will you take me to Slughorn's party?" his face fell.

"I'm sorry, but…I…um…no." He said apologetically, a hint of irritation seeping into his carefully controlled voice. At that point a young woman with curly brown hair joined him and the red head and they left the common room. The girl looked disappointed, but her glow shone brighter than ever. As she walked away I caught sight of the boy standing behind her, his camera held limply in his hand. He was trying, with little success, to keep the pain and disappointment off his face. Behind me I heard someone whisper to a friend.

"Poor Collin, he's been waiting four years to ask her out, and now that he finally got the courage, he's too late." I didn't turn to see who had spoken, I slunk further into the corner, trying to block out the look of pain on the boy's face. I felt a terrible sadness and pity sink in, for if there was something I had learned from my years of watching humans, it was that this would not end well.

I continued to watch the boy and girl out of the corner of my eye as I drifted past the multitude of people passing by. The boy with his camera, his face lighting up whenever she passed by, only to be extinguished when he saw she was looking at the black haired boy. The girl with the confident smile, that hid the desperation she was starting to feel at ever being asked out by Harry Potter. She held on to her confident air, until she heard that a boy had been poisoned. She believed that it was all her fault; that he could have died because of a love potion she had given to her black haired obsession.

When she heard the news she ran out of the great halls and into the dark secrecy of my arms. Only one person saw her leave. He clutched his camera tighter in his hand, then ran out after her. She didn't hear him because of the sobs that shook her entire body. He sat down next to her, hidden in my dark embrace.

Her sobs took a long time to quiet down, but the boy didn't say anything. He just sat there, letting her tears ease her sorrow. Once she had calmed down a little, she looked up at him. Her face was red and blotchy, but he still looked at her as if she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She offered him a shaky smile as another tear ran down her face. He reached out a shaky hand and wiped it away. She stared at him, shock written on her face. He reached into his pocket and held out a photo. She glanced at it, and a dazzling smile lit her face.

"It was my favorite," the boy said softly. " It is the only photo I have that shows the true Harry." He smiled down at the photo of the blond haired man with the wide smile tugging at an arm coming from somewhere out of the picture. "I want you to have it."

"But you said it's your favorite." She said, the ghost of a smile on her face.

"I said it was my favorite, I have a new favorite."

"Can I see it?" She asked. The boy hesitated, then pulled another photo out of his pocket, but he didn't offer it to her. She took his hand and moved it so she could see the photo held in it. A gentle smile graced her lips as she looked at the girl with dark eyes and curly black hair in the photo. Her photo self smiled back at her. I was prepared for her to hit him, or call him a creep, but she didn't. She looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time in four years. Then she leaned over and pressed her lips to his. He froze with shock, then, slowly, hesitantly, wrapped his arm around her waist. I unclasped my cloak, and hung it around them, leaving them with the protection and privacy of darkness, before flitting away.

...

I never saw them apart except at night for the rest of that year. They were always talking and laughing. Often the topic of their discussion was a certain black haired boy with a lightning shaped scar. He was their role model, their idol. They started up a secret fan club. It held all of two members, and that was exactly the way they liked it. The boy would often go up and talk to the black haired boy, but the girl was too shy after her previous embarrassments. When she heard that he was going out with a red head a year younger than him, she mustered her courage and approached the girl. In the last second she lost her courage and blurted out the first question that came to mind.

"Is it true that Harry Potter has a hippogriff tattooed on his chest?" The red haired girl looked at her for a second, then laughed.

"No, it's a Hungarian horntail." She turned back to her friends, and the girl returned to the safety of my cloak.

At the end of the year there was a disturbance in the middle of the night. People in black cloaks had broken into the school and were fighting teachers and some of the students. The boy tried to join the fight, but the girl held him back, tears streaming down her face.

...

That summer they faithfully wrote each other every day. When they met up at the train station for the beginning of the next school year, it was as if nothing had changed. That year started out bad and did not get better. There were new teachers. The boy snapped a picture of one of them and got a slap in the face. After that he often returned to the common room with bruises and cuts that the girl would tend to with hidden tears. Halfway through the year they moved to a magical room where many other students were already staying. I often hid out in the room with them, as the things happening in the rest of the country were too sad to watch. Everyday there were reports of more murders, more destruction.

And then the black haired boy came back to school, bringing the death and destruction with him. The destroyers wanted him dead. Underage students were sent away to moderate safety, but the boy and girl snuck back in. Hand in hand they fought for what they believed, for their families, for their hero. Curses flew all around them. I saw a green curse fly straight at the boy, then hit him in the chest. He crumpled to the ground, his exhilarated smile still alive on his face. The girl felt the dead weight tugging on her hand and spun around. She sunk to her knees and shook the boys, tears streaming down her face, her lips forming words I couldn't hear over the sounds of the battle. Another curse shot past her ear and she stood up, shaking with pain and rage. She shot curses in short succession, taking down black robed man after black robed man.

What seemed like years later there was a lull in the battle; the eye of the storm. The girl stood in the middle of the corridor, half blinded by tears. Slowly, she knelt down, taking the boy's cold hands in her own. She placed one kiss on his lips, before turning around and breaking into a run. She ran out of the castle, through the grounds, towards a rocky outcrop hanging over the lake. At first I didn't think she was going to stop, but right where the outcrop dropped into the water the came to a hesitant stop. She pulled out two pieces of paper from a pocket inside her robes. She looked at them, her thoughts flowing through my head as I felt myself becoming one with her pain, the darkness of loss inside her head welcoming me in.

He was always taking pictures; she had never seen him without his camera, yet she had no pictures of him. She stared longingly at the two pictures in her hand, the first two he had ever given her. Somewhere in the back of her mind she registered the sounds of battle starting up again, but she didn't care anymore. She took a step forward, a couple rocks falling from under her foot into the water below. Then, taking a deep breath, she dropped the glossy images into the water and watched them float slowly out of sight, before turning around and walking away. She wouldn't come back for the funeral, it would be nothing more than a man speaking about a boy he had never met and tears shed over a pile of bones. He knew she loved him, she did not feel the need to apologize to a lifeless corpse. She had already shed her tears. She had already said her goodbyes.

With a stab of pain I pulled myself out of her mind and watched from a distances as she walked away and faded out of sight in the folds of my cloak.

...

That was the last time I ever saw her. I kept my eyes open for a particularly bright spark, but I found nothing. So I resumed my place in the corners of the world, the ever present, yet always elusive shadow that sees all and can do nothing. And so I watch life pass me by day after day, night after night, but I have never been able to forget the image of those pictures drifting out of sight on the surface of the glassy lake.


End file.
